Well, the day is here, boys and girls – Samsung's newest flagship is a go. As expected (and never doubted), it's called the Galaxy S4, and it picks up where the GSIII left off. Offering even more eye-tracking features, more horsepower under the hood, and a few tricks from the Note II's playbook, the GS4 is a worthy successor to the world's most popular Android phone. Let's get down to the nitty gritty.

5" 1080p Super AMOLED HD display (441 PPI) – it even works with gloves on (!)

13 MP Rear shooter, 2MP front camera – you can shoot videos and take pictures with both at the same time

16GB/32GB/64GB Storage, microSD card slot with support up to 64GB

Android 4.2.2 with a "totally new and upgraded user experience"

Available on 327 operators in 155 countries

Bluetooth 4.0

4G LTE Support

802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi

IR Blaster

MHL 2.0

Temperature and humidity sensors (!)

2,600mAH battery

136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm, 130g

Two colors: Black Mist, White Frost

As hardware progression is a given with new devices, the specs alone aren't all that impressive. But like previous leaks suggested, the real story is in the software. Samsung started something with gestures, eye tracking, and the like with the Galaxy S III, so it's not surprising that the company continued these types of innovations with the S4 – it even took a couple of the standout features from the Note II, modified them a bit, and brought them along for the ride.

For example, you can hover over thumbnails in the gallery with your finger to see a larger picture – exactly like Air View on the Note II that requires the S Pen. But now the S Pen is your finger. S Finger. So far as eye tracking is concerned, the S4 features Smart Stay, as well as some new features called Smart Pause and Smart Scroll. The former will automatically pause videos when you look away, while the latter will let you scroll through web pages without physically touching the device – simply move the device back and forth while looking at it to scroll. From what we hear, that one isn't working quite right yet.

The camera(s) has gotten a whole slew of enhancements, mostly on the software level:

Drama Shot: takes up to 100 photos in 4 seconds, and overlays them into one

Eraser: if someone walks into the shot, you can easily remove them (anyone remember Scalado Remove?)

Dual mode: use both cameras at the same time

Sound & Shot: captures an image with sound

Dual Video call: Use both cameras while on a video chat, presumably only works with Samsung's ChatON software

...and more

Add to that a bunch of new "S", gesture-based features, and other software tweaks:

S Translator: Translates nine different languages in real-time – both text to speech and speech to text.

S Voice Drive: Control your phone with your voice while in the car – it can even read SMS messages and the like back to you.

S Travel.

S Health: With accompanying accessories – S Band, Body Scale, and Heart Rate Monitor – the GS4 will help you get healthy. Assuming that you actually use the stuff, of course.

Air Call accept: Simply wave your hand over the screen to answer a call. Neato.

Group Play: Not as dirty as it sounds, this lets users share music, photos, documents, and games with devices around without the need for Wi-Fi or even a cellular AP. It's magic.

Share Music: Plays the same song on multiple devices in real-time.

The GS4 will be available beginning in Q2 on various operators around the globe, including AT&T, Spring, T-Mobile, Verizon, US Cellular, and Cricket in the US; Deutsche Telecom, EE, H3G, Orange, Telenor, Telia Sonera, Telefonica, and Vodafone in the UK.

Samsung Introduces the GALAXY S 4 - A Life Companion for a richer, simpler and fuller life

March 14, 2013

GALAXY S 4 gets you closer to what matters in life, bringing your world together

New York, USA, March 14, 2013 - Samsung Electronics announced today the fourth generation GALAXY S, the GALAXY S 4, designed to get you closer to what matters in life and bring your world together.

Understanding what matters most to us in our lives, the Samsung GALAXY S 4 was developed to redefine the way we live and to maximize our fulfillment of life. This sleek and innovative smartphone makes every moment of life very meaningful; it understands the value of relationships, enabling true connections with friends and family. It believes in the importance of an effortless user experience, making your life easy and hassle-free; and, it empowers your life, helping take care of your well-being.

The beauty of the phone is the highly crafted design encompassing a larger screen size and battery, minimized bezel; all housed in a light (130g) and slim (7.9mm) shape. The Samsung GALAXY S 4 is slimmer yet stronger, with less to hold yet more to see. It has come up with simply unreal beauty. At launch, two color options will be available - Black Mist and White Frost; with a variety of additional color options to follow later this year.

“With the GALAXY S 4, Samsung is again going to enhance the way we live,” said JK Shin, President and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung. “All the innovative features of GALAXY S 4 were developed based on the insights and needs we found from our consumers all around the world. Following the successful GALAXY S series, this phone is yet another great proof point of people-inspired innovation. At Samsung we’ll never stop pursuing innovation conceived by people, so we can inspire them in return.”

Meaningful Moments - Gives Greater Enjoyment

A rich life is one that’s filled with meaningful moments and the GALAXY S 4 captures and shares those special moments. The GALAXY S 4 has the world’s first Full HD Super AMOLED display to showcase images at their very best. Its 5-inch large screen has 441ppi for stunning viewing quality. The Samsung GALAXY S 4 also utilizes Corning’s new Gorilla® Glass 3＊, making it a durable travel companion for all of life’s adventures.

Equipped with a 13 megapixel rear camera, the GALAXY S 4 also boasts a ‘Dual Camera’function that allows simultaneous use of both front and rear cameras. When capturing moments, users can choose from a variety of frame effects which blend the two pictures naturally and also adjust the size of the small picture inside the big one. Users can select 8 different ways to combine the two photos taken by the front camera and the rear camera. At the same time, the ‘Dual Video Call’ function enables you to make and receive a video call with friends and family while showing what you are looking at during the call.

The camera functionality extends beyond Dual Camera, as the device is also equipped with 12 outstanding shooting modes including ‘Drama Shot’, which allows you to see all the action in one continuous time-lapse, and ‘Sound & Shot’, which uniquely stores sound and voice together as the picture is taken so those special moments are captured in the truest form imaginable, exactly as they happened.

These meaningful moments can also now automatically be stored in a photo album, with the new ‘Story Album’ function. Photos taken by the GALAXY S 4 are automatically gathered and sorted out according to your timeline, geo-tagging information, or a specific event to create a photo album. These unique story albums can be ordered and delivered as an offline photo album through a new partnership with Blurb＊, so you can keep those precious moments safe to look at and share time and time again.

True Connections – Brings People Together

Samsung GALAXY S 4 enables true connections with the people in our lives. It is more than a personal device that can be enjoyed by one user - it makes the most of our relationships allowing us to easily share and experience many of life’s pleasures together with family and friends, wherever you are.

With its ‘Group Play’ function, users can enjoy music, photos, documents and games with those around them without even requiring a Wi-Fi AP or cellular signal. This innovative feature enables users to connect directly with others to share, play and co-create content and entertainment instantly. Its ‘Share Music’ option allows users to have the same song playing on multiple phones in sync to create the best party atmosphere.

The GALAXY S 4 brings all people closer together by breaking down language barriers. It makes international travel a joy, with ‘S Translator’ which provides instant translation, using text or voice translation on applications including email, text message and ChatON. This instant translation is possible both from speech to text and text to speech and ensures that you can rely on the correct information whilst abroad.

The GALAXY S 4 supports HSPA＋42 Mbps and 4G LTE which means wherever you are in the world, you can rely on perfect connectivity. Especially, the LTE version supports up to 6 different band sets which allows it to function in most LTE coverage areas as well as enabling global LTE roaming. Furthermore, TDD/FDD LTE Dual Mode version will be introduced later this year.

Effortless Experience - Makes Things More Convenient

In today’s world, we are all looking for smart ways to make life easier and less stressful. The GALAXY S 4 ensures that tasks are effortless with innovative features that detect your face, voice and motions to enable screen control with no need for finger touch activation.

‘Samsung Smart Pause’ enables you to control the screen by where you look. When you are watching a video, the video pauses when you look away then it starts right up again when you are back. ‘Samsung Smart Scroll’ allows you to scroll the browser or emails up and down without touching the screen. It recognizes your face looking at the screen and movement of your wrist and then scroll the pages up or down accordingly.

‘Air View’ allows users to hover with their fingers to preview the content of an email, S Planner, image gallery or video without having to open it. You can even see a magnified view on the internet browser, or a phone number saved in the speed dial on the keypad. With ‘Air Gesture’, you can change the music track, scroll up and down a web page, or accept a call with a wave of your hand.

With ‘S Voice™ Drive’ you can activate commands via voice control for optimization when driving. Once connected with a car Bluetooth, the phone automatically turns into driving mode converting text to speech so you can easily and safely check messages with no need to look at the screen.

‘Samsung Optical Reader’ makes life yet more effortless, by automatically recognizing text, a business card or QR code information, and providing useful functions such as translation, call, text message and search.

At home, using ‘Samsung WatchON’, the GALAXY S 4 will transform into an IR remote to control your home entertainment system including TV, set-top box, DVD player and even air conditioner. In addition, you can enjoy various content including live TV, cable TV and VOD based on the rich information provided by EPG (Electronic Program Guide).

Empowered Living - Takes Care Of Your Health and Quality of Life

The GALAXY S 4 empowers your life by keeping you up-to-date with health and wellbeing information using the new ‘S Health’ software. The combination of sensors built within the device systematically and automatically monitors your health, surroundings and so much more to help improve your quality of life. Also, users can easily check their health conditions using food diary, exercise diary and sleep monitor to stay fit and healthy. (Certain functions are enabled by specific accessories.)

To further protect your wellbeing, ‘Samsung Adapt Display’ provides an optimal viewing experience, customized for each type of application, and ‘Samsung Adapt Sound’ offers an optimal level and type of sound, personalized for each user, to make the most out of life.

Samsung GALAXY S 4 will be available from Q2 globally including US, partnering with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, as well as US Cellular and Cricket. In Europe, Samsung GALAXY S 4 is partnering with global mobile operators such as Deutsche Telecom, EE, H3G, Orange, Telenor, Telia Sonera, Telefonica, and Vodafone.

Cameron is a self-made geek, Android enthusiast, horror movie fanatic, musician, and cyclist. When he's not pounding keys here at AP, you can find him spending time with his wife and kids, plucking away on the 6-string, spinning on the streets, or watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on repeat.

The average joe doesn't, but nearly half a million did. I don't know what it maxed out at, but I saw that the viewer total reached 433k. That doesn't count re-broadcasters. That's a lot of people to creep out with a fully grown man offering candy to a little kid.

http://twitter.com/navjotbatra Navjot

They don't usually show new device presentations at Time's Square though.

Michael McGrade

I actually enjoy their presentations. They don't just tell you what it does...they give you a story with it. A life example. It's fun and educational in a sort of way. One of the things I enjoy about watching all their events. It's not all boring...if really existent at all like some companies do and lock down their events...or the phones...or both.

Chris Brown

meh. going with HTC One.

Stan

I'm with the HTC one

fixxmyhead

Hahaha are u serious?

Doug Nichols

Have to say after watching that presentation I agree. Saw a lot of gimmicky features (S-Voice anyone?) but nothing special.

Flo K-Man

Nexus 4. Best Software.

acer1096xxx

Typo. It's 7.7 mm thick

http://www.androidpolice.com/ Artem Russakovskii

Nope, it's 7.9.

acer1096xxx

Oh, sorry about that. =

brkshr

It's about time manufacturers put IR back in phones!

Michael McGrade

I've been thinking and talking about this for some time now. It makes sense especially since they also make TV's. Perfect. I've been waiting for the return of these. So glad.

FrillArtist

Apple is running scared!! Just look at what Phil Schiller of Apple was saying about Android this morning. Samsung is not just eating away at Apple's lunch but they're feasting on it too.

I'm no stock market expert, but didn't the announcement happen after trading hours?

SetiroN

You're right, I'm even less of an expert. Doesn't change the fact that the S4 still isn't a game changer tho. :)

spydie

sour grapes for you apple fanboys?

SetiroN

trololol

Kelvin Davis

It's an s3 with a better screen and software that's way too bloated.

It's like a gumbo phone.
It's good, but they threw everything in it.

blood_fart

That's what custom ROMs are for.

didibus

It seems you can't see past your nose.

It's only an S3 as far as the design of the phone slightly resembles the S3. The screen is 5" and 1080p, it has a temperature and humidity sensor, an IR blaster, a 13MP back camera, a 2MP front camera, the touch screen detects hovering, it has twice the cores of the SIII and is clocked higher, it has 2GB of RAM, a better GPU and the phone is SMALLER and LIGHTER then the SIII (even with the bigger screen).

I did not like that presentation... I guess I see it 'being different', but it was too cheesy.

blood_fart

YES !

Mongo like!

http://www.facebook.com/saif.faris.7 Saif Faris

can you change the battery or is it inaccessible like the iPhone?

jillon sin

It is removable!

Michael McGrade

As always!

hanbeeg

Hm, I'm not impressed... It's more like a Galaxy SIII+...

HTC One for me!

Hans J

And why would that be?

Jordan Richesin

Because the HTC One with 5.0 sense is something finally different. The phone looks more aesthetically pleasing and tegra 3 is something special. Tegra 4 will be better of course but yeah. HTC One. And it won't be advertised at all until like four months from now but that's just the beauty of HTC. People who use the phones understand why. I had the One X, best ever but then I jumped on the Samsung band wagon and got an S3. Big mistake!!! HTC ONE. cant wait till the plus comes out in the latter of this year. Then. I will switch. Probably like the guy above.

SetiroN

FuturamaFry.jpg

http://www.facebook.com/atewhaiti Aaron Te Whaiti

Do some research dude, there's plenty of articles that explain this.

http://www.facebook.com/atewhaiti Aaron Te Whaiti

Enjoy your limited storage on a phone made by a company rapidly going downhill lol.

hanbeeg

Seriously? The phone comes as a 32 GB and a 64 GB variant. That's plenty of storage and enough for me.

jillon sin

Loved the presentation! Camera features are BRILLIANT. Also the multiple gaming in the same room without network connection!! (Bring back pokemon on s4)

Hans J

The features of the S IV are great upgrades to the S3.

Angel Penabad

0 info about processor or GPU. Nice done Samsung!!

http://www.androidpolice.com/ Artem Russakovskii

Not in the presentation, true. But it's up in the press release and above. No exact processor model numbers though.

cy_n_ic

So when can we expect the S5? Trolololol

GraveUypo

best things by far are temperature and humidity sensors. about time someone put that in a phone

Temperature has been in Android since API level 3 and Humidity was added in API level 14. I'm happy to see a phone with these sensors. Just like how Google Maps is crowd sourced for accuracy so can the weather. The future is now!

mgamerz

I did not know that those were in the standard SDK since no device seems to have them... Hmmm...

http://twitter.com/kuyanyan Yanyan | RR

I still don't know what the humidity sensor would do for this phone or why I should be excited for one. That pattern looks a lot subtler than earlier leaks suggest and I prefer it over the brushed metal look Samsung used to use for their phones.

http://www.stevenmattera.com Steven Mattera

With a barometer, humidity, and temperature sensors in phone it makes it possible to crowd source the weather to increase forecasting accuracy. We see this today with traffic in Google Maps. The location information from your phone is send to Google and they use this information to predict traffic conditions.

There could be some other cool utilities such as controlling your thermostat to heat/cool a specific room. (May be cool to implement with Nest)

A humidity sensor could also shut off your device if you are in an environment with too much moisture to prevent damages to itself. It may also be used in conjunction with a dehumidifier.

GraveUypo

nah i'm not actually excited, it's just something i always felt could be there.
i'm fine with my gs3 for a couple more years.

but the humity sensor would be useful to measure if humidity (duh) is appropriate for storage of certain things that have to be stored at low humidity at my farm. i'd be handy to have it on the phone.

looking at health issues, it makes it easier to keep track of room humidity when air conditioners are on, so you can set an alarm when humidity hits a critical point.

spring is also dangerously dry (under 15% humidity, hitting as low as 8%) where i live and online readings aren't really that reliable not only because they're an average for a huge area, but also because well, internet isn't always on.

temperature sensor have similar uses depending on how it works.

ProductFRED

Well the S3 has a barometer in it already.

Goodhunting

Let's call this puppy the Galaxy S 4 minus. HTC One it is.

RaviShah

or the s3+

Chronus719

Absolutely nothing to make me want to leave my N4. If the next Nexus has LTE, there is literally no reason anyone should want any other phone.

Battery life on my N4 is excellent; I have a ton of apps and use Google Drive/Music, and storage isn't an issue; how many people do you think actually use USB OTG; and I have absolutely no problem with nand speed on my Nexus 4. Literally. No. Reason.

SetiroN

Look, I don't want to be hostile, but the N4 isn't perfect and it's silly not to admit evident flaws.

Battery life is excellent when you aren't using it, otherwise it drains in 3 hours. Gaming is practically out of the question, even 15 minutes of ruzzle or angry birds heat it up like a stove and melt the battery - luckily it's possible to disable some cores while downclocking the cou and gpu both: ever so often I regret having killed some time in the subway when I'm facing a battery warning 4 hours from home.
There is no argument that 8 or 16gb aren't enough, network speed and google drive can't cope with 4-8Gb mkv movies or FLAC audio files, which aren't even supported by gMusic.
OTG has multiple legitimate uses, from digital audio out with an external DAC to reading random thumb drives and SD cards to using a keyboard and/or a mouse with an external screen.
And NAND speed is horrible on every single cellphone, don't tell me you can install apps without a single stutter. Sure it can be acceptable, but app loading could be improved by an order of magnitude.

So don't say that the N4 mirrors perfection and no device ever with higher battery life and storage will justify an upgrade. The S4 probably doesn't enough, but something very well could. I can happily live with mine but I'll ditch it in a second for a properly designed successor.

But whatever, if you feel like it's important to win arguments just because, go ahead and write your dotted phrases. :)

markt9002

The Nexus 4 has the best battery life out of any phone I own, and that includes the iPhone 4s with a 2 week old battery. Right now I'm at 49% with 1 day and 10 hours unplugged with 2 hours of screen time, and Google Now enabled. I've witnessed over 6.5 hours of screen time over WiFi, and that's something I've never been able to achieve on any other device. I own a Galaxy Nexus, I747 SGS3, EVO 4G LTE, and an iPhone 4s. I also never see under 4 hours of screen time while primarily using 3G.

I'm not saying the phone is perfect, but the development community has ironed out nearly every flaw. The audio bitrate over BT was fixed. The screen can be calibrated, and looks very good after doing so, the line out volume can be raised, you can revert to the older, more sensitive touchscreen driver, OTG can be enabled with a custom kernel, and I'm sure devs like morfic and franco will implement it shortly. I've used a boot.img with OTG working and a Y-cable, so don't tell me it doesn't work.

I play Virtua Tennis, and GTA Vice City all the time, and my phone doesn't heat up, or lag. It also barely gets hot after running the full GLBenchmark 2.5 suite two times in a row. While I'd like an SD slot, and more NAND space, I'm aware of its limitations, and host a Subsonic server at my house to get around these limitations. I use DSub to stream and download music to my device, and I play back my FLAC files and mp3s with Poweramp. I haven't even opened Google Music, and it gets removed right when I clean flash a ROM. I don't understand why you're so hung up on NAND speed. It's fast enough for a cell phone, and who cares if there is minor stutter when you're installing an application. I can get past the few seconds of stutter when applications update. The NAND speed is literally the last of my worries. I'm much more concerned with audio quality, and the Nexus 4 delivers.

As far as watching videos, that's something I do at home on my HTPC with terabytes of space. I can't really think of a situation where I'd want to watch an .mkv on my phone, but that's my opinion.

SetiroN

I don't reach that kind of battery life. That's definitely because of how much I browse on my mobile; I miss the days where I could carry spare batteries. Battery life is one of the biggest reasons to upgrade in my eyes.

OTG will still be a problem even with kernel support, as you know the N4 cannot supply +5V out which is a big limitation, having to deal with Y cables and a power source makes it not very much on the go.
Still, I've already compiled a proof of concept kernel myself and I'm looking around for a good DAC/amp capable of +5V out that would act as an external battery as well as the OTG power source. We'll see, the lack of development is making me want to look into it myself... but I'm neither good nor very available.

On audio quality I have to disagree... I'm still looking forward to the day I will be able to ditch my DAP. The N4 is on the higher end of things (not really on top though), but cellphones in general don't deliver the quality I'm used to unless connected to an external DAC... which requires OTG (as I said, hopefully I'll find a DAC/amp to solve the issue).

I'm hung up on nand speed just like I was on mechanical disk drives: slow I/O is the biggest bottleneck of computing. You might not see many people complaining about it. It's not about app installation, app loading is relatively slow on any device and I could use faster boot speeds (in case USB audio works). I'm eagerly waiting for SoCs with proper multi-channel controllers. I'm demanding, there's no doubt about that, and current performance is definitely bearable, but my point was against "there's literally no reason to upgrade"... there is, and this is one of them.

Your phone doesn't heat up while gaming? That's a first. Do you have a "faster" bin? Mine is "fast", which already gets downvolted quite a bit, and with all the cores active and standard clocks becomes VERY hot, draining battery like mad in the process.

Unfortunately I'm unable to work around the storage issue with streaming: i don't have an home server, I don't have an unlimited plan and I'm pretty sure network performance wouldn't be consistent enough for continuous 1mbit/s streaming.
Along with battery life, storage would be a major upgrade reason.

I don't usually watch videos on my phone (although it has happened more than once while travelling, as I don't carry a tablet around or always have my laptop), the reason I like (or used to like) to carry .MKVs is video out and portable storage. I'm often away from home so right now I use my laptop when i need it, but it's cumbersome and still doesn't address the occasional random necessity. A thumb drive doesn't quite make up for it.

Anyway, I hope you understood my point: yes, the N4 is good but no, it's not perfect at all and there are multiple reasons to look forward to a better device.

markt9002

Well said. The binning on my phone is fast, just like yours. I'm beginning to think that some mainboards were engineered better than others. It may also explain why the GLBenchmark 2.5 results vary so much. If you look at the averages for the Nexus 4 on the GLBenchmark website, you'll notice there is a large gap between the top, and average score (my numbers are time and time again closer to the "top" scores.) This huge deviation from average to top is not apparent on the iPhone 5.

To be honest, my phone has never gotten very hot, even on the stock kernel. I received my phone a week after launch, and the first thing I did is run GLBenchmark 2.5. It surpassed Anandtech's freezer tests without using a freezer, and I ran the entire suite just like Anandtech. The heat your device is generating may be why your battery life suffers. Maybe it's time for an RMA? I don't know.

I agree with you about NAND, and I'm always looking for something bigger and faster. To say that there is no reason to upgrade is ignorant, but I can see why people are turned off by upgrading. The mobile industry is advancing extremely quickly.

All of my desktop computers boot from an SSD. I don't think it's possible for me to go back to mechanical drives for anything other than storage (my luck with 2TB drives from Seagate and Hitachi have been complete shit and I've lost tons of data over the past 2 years because I'm too cheap to put them in a disk array.) Anyway, I'm amazed how fast I can boot Linux Mint an Windows 7 with an SSD, and UEFI BIOS. I can agree with you, faster NAND is always a plus. Same with memory. The SGS4 is one of the few devices with LPDDR3 memory, and I believe the US SGS4 with Snapdragon 600 will have an advantage over the HTC One in benchmarks because the One is using LPDDR2.

I'm aware of the current OTG limitations, and for my usage, I don't mind having to supply V5 power. My car has built in USB, and the only time I'm going to use OTG is in my car with a flash drive full of FLAC for streaming over BT. I can entirely see why having to supply power is a huge disadvantage. However, you may want to look into a power brick to supply power once OTG is implemented into some of the more popular kernels.

I don't know where you're located, or what carrier you're using, but I have 5GB of data though T-Mobile, and I haven't used over 3GB for the month. I've actually tried to use more than 3GB while I was on vacation for 2 weeks. I have fast WiFi at my office, and at home, so I'm almost always around WiFi. T-Mobile is more than enough for streaming 320kbps. Actually, I'm very impressed by T-Mobile's network.

I can see why more storage is important to you, and everyone uses their devices differently. Regarding the DAC, I think it's sufficient for my needs. It powers my Sennheiser cans, and IMO sounds better than my iPhone 4s. I cannot hear any artifacts while my headphones are plugged in, and that's the first time I've witnessed that on a mobile phone. IMO, I'd put Wolfson DACs with voodoo audio over nearly every mobile DAC. I actually just bought a Galaxy S for my dad for this specific purpose.

ElfirBFG

4-8GB .mkv movies? In 720p? Sorry, but all my 720p .mkv are ~1GB/hr and look great even on a 32" screen. I agree that the N4 is lacking in storage space, but there is no need to store a 4-8GB video file on a phone with a 720p res.

Michael McGrade

Exactly. All of that and more. LG flopped on the Nexus. I really hope Google nails the next one out because this one was definitely sub par. I still wouldn't mind having the GNex. But I'll have to just deal with the S4 instead I guess...lol.

markt9002

I own the Gnex, and the Nexus 4 is miles ahead of it in nearly every aspect. Although, I do like the polycarbonate on the Gnex. I've dropped it probably 5 times and it still looks great. The Gnex had a pretty poor GPU, and audio DAC, and the difference is night and day when you compare them side by side. Also, I could never achieve more than 3.5 hours of screen time over WiFi, and that's something that slightly bothered me. LG really surprised me with the Optimus G, and Nexus 4. They're both very solid devices, and nothing pisses me off more than brand fanboys.

Michael McGrade

The N4 was ok but I think what Google is doing with Moto will be far more interesting.

SetiroN

While I obviously agree that it's not perfect and I wouldn't mind having a Gnex instead, at £279 flopped is quite a bit of an overstatement.

http://www.facebook.com/lucyparanormal Daniel Tiberius

I love my Nexus 4 too but the Galaxy phones certainly have a lot of features that people want, like the things SetiroN said. My battery life is just fine but USB OTG would be nice as would lots of storage.

samcraig

The presentation was great actually. Was it cheesy - yes. But how many of these presentations or commercials refuse to showcase what the phone does and real use cases instead opting for specs and/or some "techy" robotic/futuristic crap. This really showcased how the phone will be USED. For that - they get an A+. As for the phone. Not having the SIII but the Skyrocket - I'm excited to upgrade. The camera features and new scrolling features are great.

Yep

I agree fully. That's what I was picturing when watching the presentation, what it would be like in real world use. Sure it was cheesy, but it was different than how most presentations are. This will definitely be my next upgrade.

Michael McGrade

This is what I'm saying dude. It's one of the things I really like about their presentations. They don't just show you the phone...they put on a show with the phone.

http://rxsiu.wordpress.com/ rxsiu

They'd get more attention if the S IV came with S Ex...

Doug Nichols

I think that presentation put me off ever buying another Samsung device. HTC One it is!

fixxmyhead

Wow I can't believe people actually like crappier specs and old versions of android too

Doug Nichols

Perhaps, I don't need a phone that can do picture in picture of "Jeremy" tap dancing for 5 minutes XD

fixxmyhead

yea thats gay but seriously this phone shits on the HTC one. way better specs and more powerful too. the gap is widening between samsung and htc. last year it was pretty close between the one x and the s3 cuz they were almost on par with each other but now htc is trailing. i mean they didnt even increase the size or even throw in a removable battery or even an sd slot. also both of these are coming out around the same time yet samsung managed to put the latest version. htc is going downhill and the ONE is not gonna help them get back on top its gonna be a repeat of what happened last year

Doug Nichols

To be honest while I enjoy large phones I think that things are getting a bit ridiculous for Androids at this point. I am one of those people that never got the note (though did recommend to an elderly neighbor due to poor eyesight and dexterity, not a dig a Sammy but a serious point). I am perfectly happy around the 4.5 - 4.75 screen size and dont see the need for 5inch. Be that the HTC DNA or S4. Almost all the feature I saw (at this presentation, maybe there are others) are cheap gimmicks that remind me of S-Voice, instantly forgettable.
The processor really does interest me though. Love ARM and the A15, if they can get the octocore to work then they have something brilliant. But after tegra 3 with its 4+1 I will believe it when I see it.
Other then that its just; batteries and microSD cards. Which is hardly a "new" gripe.

Although it's unfair in the marketing department as Samsung's R&D budget is more than what HTC is worth.

SetiroN

Exactly!!
We totes need 5W A15 processors to deal with the awesome nand and controller that still cannot manage 2 operations at a time without chocking!!
Who cares if we have to give up 33% of our subpixels, or can't even try to use the phone with one hand, specs are more important!!

mauric

I am most surprised it actually runs android 4.2.2.

fixxmyhead

Unlike some other "flagship" phones

http://www.facebook.com/lucyparanormal Daniel Tiberius

Eh, I was hoping they'd pull it off and it looks like they will.

http://twitter.com/kuyanyan Yanyan | RR

Not really surprising as Samsung seems to be the only company interested in releasing a phone with the latest software at the moment. I initially chalked that up to them having the Nexus contract but even LG can't release a phone with the latest version of Android despite being the current Nexus manufacturer.

The Galaxy S II and the Note was released with Gingerbread and were among the first phones of their generation to receive ICS. The S III had ICS and the Note II was the first non-Nexus phone to come with Jelly Bean out of the box. The S IV's competitors are still on 4.1 so at least when it comes to software, Samsung has the lead.

Chris Caldwell

and I hope you LIKE 4.2.2, cause while im rockin an N4 with KLP youll be waiting an extra 6 months for it.

https://twitter.com/#!/psycho_maniac_ Jerry Lange

That's what flashing custom ROMs are for dude

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001482286220 Karan Ocs

I think the Specs are wrong

Quad core version is SNAPDRAGON
And i heard that it uses the GORILLA GLASS 3(!) what is that?!

and by the way although it isn't a big jump from SIII but with samsung ads it will sell like chump !

i hope Xperia Z and HTC One Come out with Great ADS!

BTW S4's Camera Functions ARE SUPER AWESOME!

Tommy Thompson

What do you mean, "What is that?" Gorilla Glass 3 was announced back at CES.

Jake Kramer

Looks beautiful, but as a North American customer I won't get burned again with lower tier hardware than is available in the international version. My S3 is serving me well at the moment, so while this is an amazing device and a new high water mark for android, I'll be giving it a pass. Maybe the next Nexus device or the rumored Motorola X Phone will be the one.

SetiroN

Samsung finally caught up with Apple: they're finally able to release a new yearly flagship that's just the previous, reheated.

michal

Finally! ;-)
Can easily skip the reheated one and fulfil my 2 years contract

http://www.facebook.com/atewhaiti Aaron Te Whaiti

Except unlike Apple's phones, the previous Samsung Phones still work well after a couple of years. I know people with old iPhones that run like absolute crap because either the iOS update has slowed them down a lot or they just don't support the latest iOS at all so they are no longer compatible with a lot of App Store apps.

mgamerz

I'm an android fanboy but I doubt it won't slowdown.

markt9002

I consider myself brand agnostic, but the iPhone 4s did slow down from iOS 5 to iOS 6, and there are some things about iOS that make jailbreak a requirement. Even my friends, who are huge iOS fanboys, complained about lag in iOS 6.

Michael McGrade

Meanwhile my Galaxy S Mesmerize is running CM 10.1 nightlies like a dream. Thanks to the boot loader not being locked and all that fun stuff. I mean heck...we have ODIN for flashing firmware.

spydie

caught up? What planet are YOU living on? Android passed apple ios capabilities years ago. My android phone can do 34 things that ios can't.

SetiroN

I was going to say trololol-2, but I've realised you're just plain dumb.

markt9002

I'm not going to lie, I still like Android a lot more than iOS, but with jailbreak, you can do some very cool things. Check out Auxo, and Zephyr. I think it would be really cool if there were something similar to Zephyr in Android.

Angel Penabad

The best part of Samsung's S4 presentation will be the AP podcast. Don't let me down guys... lol

paxmos

Other than Galaxy S2, not a fan of Samsung, but I am impressed, it looks great. Btw, to those who whine, "It takes a genius to whine appealingly"

http://petercast.net Peterson Silva

Ok, now the question is: when will these features make their way into the S3 as an update? =)

I enjoyed Will Chase! Samsung Mobile America's Marketing? not so much.
Especially, their head of marketing. for a presentation, he sure could have worn better pants.

Sorian

I am not really impressed yet with the S4. In all honesty, most of the "New apps" are taken from other developers. S translator = World Lens and Google Translate. S Health = any good fitness app and BT devices (several mentioned on AP before).

Anonymous

What are with all of the Samsung apologists here? It blows my mind that Samsung seriously just launched the US version with Snapdragon AGAIN, even though they have no hardware limitation like last year's GS3. Qualcomm's new modems make it possible for Samsung to launch with Exynos across the board.

Also, they missed clock targets. Internally it was 1.8GHz.

SetiroN

Do you really think a 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 will be slower than a 1.2GHz Exynos 5? Only the A7s run at 1.6, the A15 clock in at 1.2.

Anonymous

A 1.6 GHz Exynos 5, and judging by the sheer performance of the Cortex A15, yes.

Battery life is a completely different question, but I can tell you right now that clock speed isn't everything.

SetiroN

I know perfectly well how clock speed relates to those SoCs performance.
The A15 cores run at 1.2GHz. With 700 more MHz, the Krait 300s will be in the same ballpark.

And anyway, all that computational power goes completely wasted to say the least.

http://www.androidpolice.com/ Artem Russakovskii

I'm most excited about 802.11ac making it in and glove support, personally.

LazarusDark

pfft. 802.11ad or go home.
:P

Sootie

Then you clearly live somewhere cold! (with an expensive wifi modem to keep you warm!)

http://www.androidpolice.com/ Artem Russakovskii

I live in San Francisco. Can't say it's too hot here :P

But I'm definitely going to upgrade to 802.11ac this year - my N router is disappointing me daily.

Toss3

Have the Asus RT66U, and it's doing a great job! Should have gone for the AC instead, but if you're looking into buying a new router I would definitely recommend going with something from Asus.

Glove support will be amazing in Canada. 802.11ac is a must on everything now. The miracast will be crazy fast on that thing. Also crazy how the screen, though bigger, the phone is actually smaller then the SIII. The only thing it has missing, or maybe I'm unaware of, no induction charging?

Toss3

Does AC have any other advantages over N other than higher bandwidth? I mean I'm currently able to stream 1080p 3D movies without issues from my NAS to my TV, so I'm wondering what kind of other improvements it might have?

didibus

I think that's all. It's 500 Mbit/s or 1000 Mbit/s for dual-band. That's really the difference. Though I don't know if it has a bigger range, or stronger signal.

http://twitter.com/VicLow Victor Loureiro

Sooo... dual sim?

Tommy Thompson

Dual SIM was for the chinese market.

http://www.facebook.com/ShinobiPhoenix Cody Shiranai

So, what's Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint going to rip out to make it inferior to the international (read: TRUE) version and piss American consumers off?

Aca902

Same shape as all other android phones, nothing impressive, yeah it has mega super cpu and gpu, but what for? Oh yeah i know, im going to play crysis 3 with it, will i? No. Htc is making a difference, its something different.

Eric Jones

Price?

http://www.facebook.com/lucyparanormal Daniel Tiberius

I'm sure it'll be the same typical price, like 700 or so off contract and 199 or 299 with one.

http://www.facebook.com/lucyparanormal Daniel Tiberius

4.2.2. Suck it Apple guy who was running his mouth yesterday!

Michael McGrade

Exactly. Their marketing director is such a tool. He should have kept his mouth shut. What a d.

http://www.facebook.com/lucyparanormal Daniel Tiberius

Indeed. Major D.

troph

This is a very very nice phone. I think the issue, ironically, was the success of the marketing department "hyping" up this product. The problem with using that as a marketing strategy is the product, inherently, can almost never be AS good as the hype.

Tommy Thompson

"slimmer yet stronger" Why didn't they explain what made it "stronger"?!

Tommy Thompson

Any word on wireless charging?

Michael McGrade

Supposedly depending on markets...just like the processors.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000003999549 Mike Harris

Is it too early to start talking about the Galaxy SV? I for one am excited.

http://ramonnavarro.tumblr.com Ramon Navarro

Any news on Samsungs 'Orb' mode or Photosphere on the camera, seeing as the Galaxy S4 runs android 4.2.2?

Michael McGrade

Photosphere would be amazing!

Jake Monti

Based on what I know it would be really hard to choose between this and the HTC One for me.

HTC has Samsung crushed in the style dept., it's not even close. Even the skinning of the OS looks way better to me on the HTC One. (though I'm not sure I'm crazy about having to use blinkfeed, guess I'd want to use it before I make up my mind on it)

However, I do prefer a bigger screen and a bigger battery in the S4. Some of Samsungs gimmicks are useful. I use the screen swipe on the S3 all the time for screen prints, works great. Smart Stay actually works too, even when I am laying in bed when it's dark and night and reading the web on my phone. I use the call someone from text message by tilting the phone and bringing it to your ear too. The swiping right to call, left to text someone - use that too.

Before my S3, I had the original HTC Evo. That was my second HTC Phone after the HTC touch. They both held up for over 2 years, and i think the build quality was great. The HTC Evo also had better noise cancellation than the S3.

I'm also curious how the camera performs on the S4. I expect it to be better than the S3, and I have no complaints about that. I hope the low light performance matches the HTC One.

So unless some of the new features on the S3 are way more useful than I expect them to be, and can't be replicated by a third party app, I would have to ask myself - HTC One: Not just better looks, but great looks vs. Larger Battery and Larger Screen (two things I actually care about).

Freak4Dell

Just another Fisher Price phone with more stupid useless features.

brutalpanther

Omg.I want this.I was going to stick with s3 because i figured there might be a chip and camera upgrade.But they did way more than i could have even imagined.

http://twitter.com/navjotbatra Navjot

What is samsung doing with the 4.2 lockscreen? Lock screen widget implementation is a mess but dashclock is really useful.

ap3604

WHAT ABOUT MULTI-WINDOW?!

I haven't seen a single hands on video demoing this for the galaxy s4 :(

We have been seeing Samsung becoming a monopolistic mamouth, with the corresponding (bad) characteristics (increasingly propriatary features & ecosystem, ...).
Now Samsung threatens Google. We all know that.
We have to understand this: now it either Google (open plat-form, smart open ecosystem, giga-ubber smart and "moonshot" internet Services...) or Samsung (a gigantic, vertical, Apple-like, monopoly)...

I wonder if the S4 battery will fit in the S3 without having to buy a new case for the S3?

Matthew Fry

Soooooo.... is it going to be a Snapdragon 800 or 600?

HopelesslyFaithful

and what does the iphone have to offer??? ooops sorry forgot. Not like it even matters ^^

http://www.facebook.com/boe.dillard Boe Dillard

Hard for me to get excited based on my bad luck with Samsung phones on Verizon. The Galaxy Nexus is a nice PDA but a crappy phone on Verizon's network. The S3 is also an excellent PDA but a crappy phone. The Razr and DNA both get excellent reception. Is it too much for Samsung to spend a few minutes and figure out why their phones don't work properly on Verizon's network?

Chris Caldwell

N4: "The next big thing is already here"
Gs4: "awwwwww, but we repackaged the gs3 and everything..."

Elias

With a bigger screen and a nexus badge & price, I'd be sold. Not a nexus? No fucks given. I've already had a flagship-but-never-up-to-date Captivate and already seen my share of superbricks caused by Samsung not giving a fuck to customers.
Moreover, my current nexus 4 is still amazing.